[NorthMancBeds]

This national pavilion was designed by Dutch architects MVRDV, famous for their investigations based on the limits of spatial rules in relation to urban density. They have built and proposed some of the most bonkers buildings in Europe. The concept here was for a vertical park that explored the idea of a more dense form of urban inhabitation. There was a floor with a forest, a garden of flowers and exhibitions of urban futures, the water in the building was in a cyclical process, recovered at the bottom and pumped back to the lake on top, windmills adorned the crown and a starlit room welcomed diners at the top.

The Expo 2000 at Hannover was not an overarching success, despite the theme tune by Kraftwerk, and the pavilion, unsuitable for any other use was fenced off and eventually sold on ebay to an investor with little or no regard to this iconic piece of architecture. The theme of the expo was ‘man, nature, technology’ and this pavilion was the only one that actually really dealt with what that could mean. Whatever you might think of it, it is a seminal work of the turn of the century and a sad shame to see such an endeavour crumbling after only 10 years. Nonetheless, this has to be the most avant-garde exploration and in actuality this form has achieved monumentality amongst a drab bunch of other national pavilions now appropriated as generic office space including the sad British attempt, so imbued with national pride and identity that we commissioned a German architect to design it.

There is news of Holland not being too proud of the manner in which the pavilion has found itself and rumours that they wish to repurchase the building and restore it. We shall see…


Daytime approach, though you wouldn’t know it with the weather.


Floor that was once a sea of flowers, with ramp down to concrete bump floor


Optimistic statements about future cities and infrastructures


Dystopian version at night


The dry lake and the chamber of stars


Lift motor room and roller grafitti. The 2 800 000 is the number of visitors to this pavilion


The forest


The forest at night


The forest at night


Concrete bump world


Concrete bump world


The freaks come out at night

Peace

NMB